In 2014, the Legislature required MnDOT to study all of its existing 55 m.p.h. 2-lane rural trunk highways to determine whether it would be safe to increase some or all to 60 m.p.h. MnDOT selected us to provide traffic investigations and safety studies—on over 5,000 miles of trunk highways—to determine which areas can have speed limits safely increased from 55 m.p.h. to 60 m.p.h. Our work includes spot speed sampling, field investigations, crash along with other data analysis, and reporting.
Spot speed studies are being performed for each of more than 350 study segments. Measure point travel speeds of a representative sample of vehicles in the population are also being conducted. Field investigations are needed to assess the physical attributes of the roadway and surrounding environment, including travel lanes and shoulders, presence or lack of rumble strips, access density, vertical grades, roadside assessment, steepness of inslopes, adjacent development, traffic control along mainline, and advisory and regulatory speed reductions.
Analysis and reporting include analyzing speed and crash data, with summary reports provided to MnDOT.